Published, 31 January 2019

The Children's Services Workforce 2017

This report from the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) looks in detail at the children's services workforce in Scotland. Children's services account for just over one-quarter (28%) of the Scottish social service workforce.

Key points from the report:

The size of the workforce in children's services has increased to 55,840, a rise of 480 since 2016

This is 28% of the Scottish social service workforce as a whole

41% of the children's services workforce work in the public sector, followed by 38% private and 21% voluntary. However, different sub-sectors have different profiles

The largest sub-sector is day care of children with a workforce of 34,020. Of these, 26,300 staff (77%) work in services that provide ELC funded childcare places

Residential child care and school care accommodation have a higher proportion of men in their workforces than the social service workforce as a whole

The school hostel part of school care accommodation is an exception, which has the same proportion